The present invention relates to an insulation system that is easy to install and that thermally isolates most or all of the structural members of a building from the interior of the building as well as from the exterior covering of the building.
In the past, building structures such as metal buildings or buildings made from concrete structural members, or buildings made using combinations of concrete and metal structural members have been insulated in many ways. For example, fiber glass blanket insulation has been put between the structural members and held in place with such things as metal straps, chicken wire, etc. Rigid or semi-rigid boards of felted fibers such as glass fibers, have also been used for insulating metal and concrete buildings, but no attempt was made to isolate the structural members from the interior of the building and such rigid or semi-rigid boards did not provide sufficient insulation to meet the newly emerging standards.
Another insulating system used extensively, particularly in metal buildings, is shown in FIG. 1 and is described in detail in U.S. applications Ser. Nos. 588,734 and 591,584, both filed in June, 1975. This insulation product, known in the trade as RIGID-ROLL, comprises a layer of bonded glass fibers A which is flexible but yet board-like in that it tends to return to a board-like product after being bent and released. The layer of bonded glass fibers is faced with a vapor barrier B, such as a vinyl film. The facing, along a longitudinal edge, extends beyond the layer of bonded glass fibers to form a tab (not shown). The tab is reinforced so that when the strips of RIGID-ROLL are butted together and the tab overlies an adjacent strip, the tab forms a vapor barrier seal between adjacent strips of insulation when the metal roof sheets C are mounted in place over structural members such as D.
While such an insulation system is easy to install and offers many advantages over other systems, compression of the fibrous layer between the outer sheets C and the structural members D seriously reduces the insulating value of the insulation at those areas. As a result, such a system alone will not meet some of the high insulating standards required either by specifications or by economics in many areas of the country.
Another insulation system, which does meet high insulating standards and which may be used in metal buildings is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,014,150. This system shows as in FIG. 2 a first thermal insulation 4 located between the structural members and the covering material, a second board-like thermal insulation 8 spanning between adjacent structural members, a third thermal insulation 12 having a higher insulating value than the second thermal insulation and located between the second insulation and the covering material, and a forth insulation means 14 which serves to isolate the support members from the interior of the building and to support the second thermal insulation 8 on either side of a web 3 of support members 2. The chief drawback of this insulation system lies in the fact that in the installation of the system the fourth insulation means 14 must be secured to the support member in the conventional time consuming manner by metal screws, rivets, bolts, etc. Also the ease and simplicity of this method is hampered by the fact that the interior ceiling layer of insulation comprises more than one insulation means; for example the board-like insulation 8 and the insulation means 14.
The object of the present invention is to provide an attractive insulating system which can be easily and rapidly installed either in new construction or in the reinsulation of old construction, that can be used either along or in construction with prior art insulation systems of the type shown in FIG. 1, and that will provide a more efficient insulation system for the types of buildings described above by insulating and isolating all or most of the structural members of the building from the interior of the building, as well as from the exterior covering of this building.